Beer, Vitamins, and Jessica Simpson: Get the Facts

Celebrity watchers erupted with ecstasy at the news this week that Jessica Simpson had agreed to pitch a small Dallas brewery’s vitamin-enhanced beer.

We frowned on this idle celebration, even if her promo pic was funny and the name of the beer was too (Stampede Light Plus). We didn’t even chuckle that the ad featuring Jessica "Chicken of the Sea" Simpson had the tagline: "Be Smart. Drink Smart."

No, we took no pleasure in this.

Instead, your very serious science correspondents wanted to know the facts: how much Stampede Light *Plus* would I have to drink to satisfy my daily intake of, say, Vitamin A.

We contacted Lawrence Schwartz, CEO Stampede Brewery, and he sent us a document touting some of the beverage’s virtues. Sadly, you could drink an infinite amount of Jessica’s beer of the sea and still not get your daily vitamin A, C, or E.

In fact, Light Plus just gets you some extra B vitamins. Despite our requests, Schwartz did not disclose the actual milligrams of vitamins in the beer.

Instead, the backgrounder he sent over said: "How much B? About the same amount as Vitamin Water." Based on that information, we created the following helpful chart that provides you with the amount of beers you’d have to drink to get your B-complex vitamins.

This chart should comes with two warnings. First, don’t actually go drink 83 light beers to get your daily recommended intake of B1. Similarly, don’t drink an infinite amount of Stampede Light Plus in a vain effort to get all your B2. We used the USDA’s numbers for ‘regular’ and light beer (hat tip to Twitter’s @krash63). We based Stampede on the "Charge" Vitamin Water (via HowStuff Works) and drew the Guinness info from an old Consumers Research article.

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